


Into The Woods

by oschun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Lamiae, Leviathans, Magic, Vampires, Witches, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 15:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19065322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oschun/pseuds/oschun
Summary: Dark and dangerous are the woods.





	Into The Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'.

**Into the Woods**

Dark and dangerous are the woods. In their green mystery hide things that bite and scratch. Things that lie patiently in wait for unsuspecting travelers. Monstrous things that drool with delicious anticipation at the thought of meat, their chops slick with silvery saliva in the moonlight.

Sadness lives in the woods also for there is a dark melancholy in the hearts of hungry creatures. They are sad because they are so lonely. They want to be loved but cannot deny the destruction that is in their nature. Dark Eve, their mother, made it so. They eat what they love and so they are always empty and dissatisfied. If you listen on a winter’s night when the moon is full and the world is silent under her white glare, you will hear the howling song of their sadness.  

Once upon a time there was a little angel and a little hunter who fell through long and twisted rabbit holes into this world of tree and shadow, the world that is the sylvan dominion of Dark Eve and her monster children. Red-hot with courage and gold with honorable intention, they left shining footprints on the ancient floor of the forest, trail markers for the cold-blooded monsters who followed them, the leviathans that swam through the shadows and sniffed at the warm imprints of their noble feet.

The leviathan are hunger personified, hungrier than the lean wolves that prowl the woods at night and snuffle through the undergrowth for furry creatures with tiny beating hearts. The wolves will make do with earthy fungi and berries to keep the beast that is hunger from gnawing at their bones. But the leviathan are carnivores incarnate. No mushroom and pond-water soup or winter-berry compote for them! They must have meat. Hot and raw and bloody. What a tasty thing is the flesh of man, and tastier still with hunter spice and angel light. Fee Fie Fo Fum!

Strong and faithful through the woods they stick together, this little hunter and his angel too, like a sticky, stuck-together brotherhood of two, pretty little peas in a pod, two are two.

Twit twoo. Twit twoo. Above, golden-eyed owls bat their lashes at rustling mice and sharpen their claws in anticipation. Below, chomping jaws and creeping claws follow the heroic pair as through the woods they go. The law of two, stronger than the malevolent law of the woods purposes their steps and keeps them safe, brothers by choice knitted to each other’s sides, stitches through the flesh of self and binding two into one. One is one. Two are two. One and one are two.

But there are darker and colder and lonelier things in the woods, things far worse than monsters and blood-stained Mothers. Laws can be unknit by unknown things that seep out from layers and layers and layers of ancient decay. It can’t be seen. It spreads like a dark stain. Beware of sitting near streams that mesmerize and hypnotize, for the sadness of silent water will be your undoing.

Distracted by the dark call of deep down things, the little angel sits alone beside the river, staring into the enormous mirror of his watery reflection. It stares unflinchingly back at him. Guilt is in reflection. He loses himself and so the bond with the hunter brother is severed. One becomes two. One is one. Two are two.

The hunter ventures on alone. He’s sure his fate is sealed without his feathery brother at his side, but he fights on, murdering monsters with his toothy blade for such is his fighting nature, through and through. He doesn’t know, this lonely hunting boy, that there are heroes ahead. Heroes with daggers for teeth.  

He will show the way, this other hero, this heart-less, bloodless man, once a marauder of the sea and now an earth-walking soul, a survivor for years in this grey No-place filled with monsters far worse than he. He is Nosferatu, those ancient survivors of bloody Carpathian histories, coffin dwellers that are unnatural allies for those whose hearts pump blood through their veins.

Beneath the skeleton trees at night this spiky-toothed hero dreams of murder and love. Like all sons, he dreams of his father, a tyrant destroyer; and like all lovers, he dreams of his beloved, the beautiful siren of the rocks with endless dark hair folding like waves of black water into the sea.

And like all monsters, he dreams hungrily of blood. But his rage and loneliness gnaw more fiercely at his bones than hunger. The strongest fire inside him is vengeance. He must escape. He will escape the woods. He listens to the moon-song of sad monsters and knows that starvation is the price for freedom. Choosing the narrow path of the abstinent monk, he denies his ancestral blood-hunger and learns to love (and not eat) the hunter-woodsman who will rescue him on the white steed of his humanity.  

And so the story is rewritten. Once upon a time there was a hunter and a vampire who fought side by side in purgatory, the wooded land of the dead. Wily tricksters both, they refused to be meat for monsters. Clippety-clop, Clippety-clop, through the woods they went on the white horse of brotherhood, heroically trotting their way through the dusk and into the light.

Behind them, lost in the gloom and drunk with the terribleness of his own water-reflection, the angel longed for death eternal and languished beside Dark Eve’s silent river, his sad self growing shallow roots into the black soil like a lonely willow tree.

Pa-pa-paa! Pa-pa-paa! The sound of holy trumpets! A winged garrison of soldiers of the Father of Light gallop into the knife-edged woods on bleeding horses and cut the little angel out of the watery web of his despair. Snippety-snip, they cut him free and stick the broken shards of his shattered self together with glue. Now he’s a crooked gingerbread boy with broken wings and a heart of fragile glass. 

**Little Red**

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Charlie who lived in a small village nestled in a mountainside in a cold Northern country. Her skin was the color of fresh milk and her hair was the fiery red of Maple trees in the Fall. She was loved by all who knew her because of her generous nature, mischievous laughter and crafty cleverness. She knew how to lay traps made from birch branches for rabbits in the woods and was unafraid of the lean grey wolves who slunk between the trees, their mouths watering for girl flesh and rabbit meat. She carried a knife with her, as all mountain children do. Charlie’s belonged to her father. He’d gone hunting one day and never returned, and now the knife was hers. If a wolf came near, she would brandish it and stare the hungry creature down, her small white teeth bared to remind the wolf that the children of men have savage hearts too.

Charlie and her mother lived in a small house made of logs with a roof of yellow grass at the very edge of the village. Theirs was a contented home even though they were only two in a house made for seven. Father was taken by the woods and there were the three sisters that were claimed by the everyday trials of a hard life. None of them saw their tenth birthday, but that was common enough in that time and place.

There was the back-to-front sister lost at birth, who came out feet first with the cord of life wrapped tight around her little neck. A second was stolen by a winter sickness that crept through the village like a silent wraith from the frozen mountain-top and took a child in every second home. A third was lost in the third month of the year in a river swollen with snowmelt.

They say drowning is the easiest of all deaths, but Charlie didn’t like to think of the third sister fighting against the current to swim back to the riverbank. And she would have fought. She was strong and fierce. It wouldn’t have been easy.

And then there was the fourth sister. A girl with silvery hair and eyes the color of the sky up where the mountain air is breathlessly thin. People said there was something wrong with her. Too pretty and too strange. She lay alone outside in the moonlight on clear nights. They said it was moon madness that made her get lost inside herself. She was always sleepy and distracted when the sun was up and used to sit in the shade of the trees listening to the songs of birds with a faraway expression. Butterflies would sit on her and lick her milky skin with their curly tongues.

A red-faced village boy—a would-be suitor who was enchanted by the milky blue of her eyes and followed her everywhere like a neglected dog—was the only witness to her death. He swore he saw her step off a cliff and disappear, swore that she did it purposefully, knowingly. A long, long, long way down.

The besotted boy met a similar fate two days after the silvery sister disappeared. The villagers said he threw himself to his death to be with her in the next life. Charlie saw her mother’s clenched fist and the bitter, satisfied glint in her eye when they told this story and she wondered what was true. Sometimes girls and boys are alone when they fall off cliffs and sometimes they aren’t.

Charlie and her mother were alone but not lonely. Her mother had the gift of showing what others couldn’t see. She would pick up a log from the fire and blow smoke at the invisible ones who sat with them around the hearth on a winter’s night: a loving father, three fierce sisters and another sister of moonlight and butterfly dust. So close, but unseen. It made Charlie’s heart glad to know they were there.

*******

It was a clear Spring day, the sun gently warming the cold, black earth and the budding flowers just peeping though when Charlie was on her way home with a brace of dead rabbits over her shoulder. 

“Your mother’s a witch!”

Charlie paused on the path that ran along the river into the village and considered the round, freckled boy who’d leaped out from behind a tree and shouted this thing at her that was a silently acknowledged truth by all that knew, but exceedingly impolite and a little dangerous to say aloud.  

“She dances naked with the devil in the forest. Everybody knows your nanny goat died days ago. Her kid’s still alive because it sucks blood from your mother’s third nipple to fatten him up for a sacrifice. Maah! Maah!”   

Charlie was tired from a day of hunting and gathering in the woods and didn’t feel like crushing this bleating boy with spite and wit. Her bloody knife was in her collecting bag over her shoulder. She knew stabbing boys was not allowed but maybe a sharp little poke in the belly would frighten him off and teach him a lesson.

As she felt for the hilt of her knife, a stone came zinging past and hit the boy in the stomach. She turned and saw her friend Sam sitting up on a branch in the big, gnarled tree that lived between her log house and his family’s dilapidated stone cottage. He could often be found there, hidden in the greenery and just a pair of familiar dangling legs and Sam-shape through the leaves.

Sam was a boy with slanted, foxy eyes and bewitched hair. A gypsy tinker travelling through the village once sold his father a pair of magical silver scissors he claimed would end the witch’s spell cast over Sam’s mother’s swollen belly, a spell that made her son come out in a nest of his own silky hair and kept it growing and growing and growing after he was born. Even when he was a baby it had to be cut twice a day. The silver scissors didn’t work because gypsy magic doesn’t work against mountain witchcraft.

Another stone came zinging from the Sam shape in the tree. “Witch! Witch!” the angry boy chanted at them both, hand holding his bruised stomach.

Wherever Sam was, his brother Dean was near. He came out of the undergrowth, barefoot and muddy to his knees, a pair of silvery fish over his shoulder.

“Witch! Witch! Witch!” the round boy cried.

Dean walked past Charlie and punched the boy once in the mouth. He ran off bleeding and bleating. Dean watched him for a minute, then went over and looked at Charlie’s catch admiringly. “Swap you a scaly fish for a furry rabbit.”

Charlie considered the fish at the end of Dean’s line. They were full of the oily fat of spring – juicy and delicious. Her hares still had the leanness of winter. “You can have both if you gut one fish for me and mother. Fair is fair.” She hated the stink of raw fish guts but liked the sizzle of a trout in a pan with scrubbed potatoes and fresh greens from the river edge.

Sam climbed down from the tree and the three of them stood around their dinner. Dean put his hands on his hips. “There’s two and two. A rabbit and a fish for each. Fair is fair.”

Sam nodded at the logical equation, and Charlie accepted it, even though it wasn’t true. She bent down and gutted one of the rabbits and skinned it, slipping the fur coat off the lean body in one clean pull. “I’m keeping the fur,” she said, as if they were getting a better deal and she needed to balance the thing. Both boys nodded simultaneously, solemn and fair-minded.

When she was done, Dean bent down and gutted the fish. The spill of pink watery organs made her wrinkle her nose. He scaled the fish and with his knife picked up a few of the shiny translucent scales from the grass. Resting on one knee like a knight of old, he held them up to the light and said with a smile, “I’m keeping the scales.”

Charlie laughed with him and lifted a large, shiny fish scale from the sharp knife. She stuck it on his forehead where it glinted and shone green like his eyes, then she traced two parallel lines of red rabbit blood from her dirty fingers across his cheeks. “Now nobody will know if you’re a boy or a fish or a rabbit, Dean Winchester.”

A sudden, low-running wind whisked out of the forest and blew around them, ruffling their hair and rustling through the heavy foliage of the gnarled tree, then disappeared as quickly.

“But they’ll think he’s a witch,” Sam said quietly and laughed.              

Dean got up, his head turned in the direction the wind had taken, his expression thoughtful. “A man witch is called a warlock, Sammy,” he said.

Charlie’s mother appeared on their doorstep. She smiled at the boys and beckoned to Charlie. Pretending not to see the mother-longing on both boys’ faces, Charlie said, “Come and have supper with us when you’ve cleaned up.”

That’s how it worked most nights since the boys’ father disappeared, but they still pretended to consider the invitation as if it were something new that required careful consideration before they accepted. Dean was old enough to take care of them both but Charlie knew they liked the company. “Have a proper wash, Dean Winchester. You stink, “she said with a laugh and ran home.

*******

It was in Charlie’s twelfth year that the world changed irrevocably, cataclysmically.

There was the contented world of the log cabin, its familiar spruce walls, the land outside with the goats and the milking cow, everything that was home. Then there was the day she came home and found her long-lost aunt, her mother’s only sister, sitting on Charlie’s wooden stool before the fire. And opposite her, in her own rocking chair was Charlie’s mother, utterly still, her skin as white as chalk and her eyes open but eerily vacant.

“She’s not dead so don’t start screaming. I can’t bear screaming children.”

Charlie stood before her mother as if turned to stone. The chair rocked ever so slightly, making a familiar creak-creak sound against the wooden floor like it was mocking her. She reached out and touched her mother’s arm. It was as cold as ice. “Mother,” she whispered softly. No response. Nothing. Not even a flicker.

“Well, you’re not hysterical, that’s something at least. She’s not dead. Not yet anyway.”

Charlie turned to look at her aunt. Rowena existed in Charlie’s memory as fragments of a remembered person: the long scarlet hair coiled like thick red snakes down her back, lustrous dresses of silk and satin, narrow foxy eyes, a sarcastic nasal voice, the scent of sage and jasmine. Rumor had it she’d married a wealthy merchant and sailed for the New World. Nobody had seen her for years.

Rowena’s eyes scanned Charlie’s face. “Do you need me to slap you? It’s helpful in cases of shock, or so I’ve been told.”

Charlie shook herself free of the terrified torpor that had her in its grip and said, “If you hit me, I’ll cut off your hand with my knife.”

Rowena laughed. “Well, well, little ginger kitten has claws.” She stood up and patted Charlie condescendingly on the head. “Nice to know. I’m your aunt Rowena.”

“I know who you are. Why are you here?” Charlie glanced at her mother’s still form and held back the tears she felt welling in her eyes. “Is this your fault?” 

“Why does everybody always think everything is my fault,” her aunt said in a harsh voice. “I warned her. I felt it coming and sent the birds to warn her.”

“The crows,” Charlie said, remembering the flock of them that had appeared two days ago and settled in a dark cawing cloud on the roof, then started pecking insistently at the windows. The village boys had gathered outside to throw stones at them. Charlie had been frightened, more by the anxious look on her mother’s face than the birds themselves.

“She never listened. Always denied her gifts. What a waste,” Rowena said angrily, then aimed the next remark at Charlie’s mother, “And here you are, sister of mine, broken and alone. Not so smug now, are you.”

Charlie stepped between them, her blood-stained knife in her hand. “She’s not alone.”

Rowena’s eyes narrowed. She looked at the blade in Charlie’s hand and smiled. It twitched, tried to fly from her grip, but Charlie centered herself and imagined the knife as an extension of her own hand, held it loosely and controlled it.

Rowena laughed again, a surprised and delighted sound. “Oh, it burns strong in you, little Red.” She ran her fingers through Charlie’s hair and twirled a long tress around one finger. “What did my sister think of all that inheritance burning inside one of her own?”

Charlie met her aunt’s gaze defiantly and didn’t flinch when Rowena wound her hair tighter and tighter until it hurt. “It’s not how much of what you have that matters, but how you use it,” she said through clenched teeth.

Rowena smirked and arched a thin eyebrow. “Yes, that sounds exactly like something Martha would say. Bow your head meekly and be grateful for what you have. Don’t upset the balance. Don’t want too much. Be satisfied.”

“She isn’t meek,” Charlie retorted angrily.

“No,” Rowena said and looked at Charlie’s mother. “Complacent perhaps and with delusions of martyrdom, but not meek or weak. Never that.”

“What are we going to do? How will we save her?”

Rowena sat down on the stool and stared at Charlie’s mother, eventually she leaned forward and held one of her cold white hands. “It’s black magic, kitten. Very dark, very old, very powerful magic.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Rowena laughed. “You have your father’s foolhardy romanticism.” She looked around the room. “Are they all gone. Him and the other daughters too?”

Charlie nodded.

Surprisingly, tears welled in Rowena’s eyes. She bent down and pressed a kiss to Charlie’s mother’s hand. “Oh Martha. Thought you could escape the family curse with love and herbs and little white spells.”

Rowena looked at Charlie, her face hard and sharp, the fire glinting in her scarlet hair and lighting up her eyes so they glowed. “It’s going to take a disruption, a tear in the fabric of things to bring her back and finally end the curse that has plagued us for generations. It’s going to require blood and killing, kitten.”

Charlie was suddenly aware of how cold her bare feet were. The coldness started seeping icily up her legs and through her body. She felt it collecting around her heart, solid and firm. She tightened her jaw and nodded. Rowena nodded back, a silent pact, an accord between two fiery-haired daughters from a long, long line of blood-red women. 

Charlie got up and wrapped a blanket around her mother and drew the rocking chair closer to the fire.

“Don’t do that,” Rowena said sharply. “She needs to be kept cool. Meat rots.”

Charlie held back her tears, knowing that Rowena said it with the intent to hurt. She silently pushed the rocking chair across the room, through to her mother’s bedroom, lifted the dead weight out of the chair and rolled her mother into the bed. She opened the window to let in the chilly mountain air, undressed the familiar body and redressed it in cool white cotton. She closed the unseeing eyes, kissed the closed lids, the cold mouth, wept hot tears over the beloved face, then wiped her eyes and whispered, “I won’t let anything take you from me. I will do whatever it takes.”     

That night, shivering under two sheepskins next to her cold mother, Charlie dreamed of Dark Eve’s first born son. She saw a tall shadow step out from behind the trees, so tall, over seven feet high, with a head like a man’s but with long horns, a body hard and cruel with muscle, the legs of an elk, his thick thighs moving inexorably as he made his way towards the village, the sound of his hooves clip-clopping on the road, drawing closer and closer.  

Her dreams brought her wisdom as well as terror and she woke up knowing what she needed to do. She got up before the day was more than a pale glow on the horizon and wrapped herself in the red cloak that her mother had made for her birthday.

Outside the leaves of the gnarled old tree had suddenly blackened and fallen off overnight. They lay on the ground like big black beetles. Sam would cry when he saw it. Charlie wrapped her arms around the thick trunk and murmured, “It will be alright. I won’t let her die.”

The tree had been there for generations, its roots deep under the two houses. Sometimes, when there was unhappiness in one home all the leaves fell off it. Other times, when there was sorrow in both houses the tree grew fresh green buds, even in the coldest of winters, and its long branches drew comfortingly close to the windows. Like it did when Mother Winchester died in a fire and the third Bradbury sister drowned in the river.

Both families loved the tree but being unsentimental mountain people they would climb out on their roofs when it drew too close, thank it for its protection and then lop off its branches. Sometimes love can be suffocating and obscure the view from your windows. 

Charlie patted the old tree comfortingly, then followed the path up to the mountain top where the air is thin, the sky is the palest of blues and the snow and ice never melt.

She was unsurprised to find Sam and Dean patiently waiting for her there. Dean had just been cutting Sam’s unruly hair, a daily chore, and tucked the pair of scissors into his belt. “He had a dream,” Dean said, indicating Sam, “About a black elk lying on your mother and sucking the breath from her mouth. We brought chisels and axes and breakfast.”

Charlie nodded and looked up at the wall of cold clear ice that overhung a precipice behind them. “We need to make a box of ice.”

“Sam saw that in his dream too.” Dean squinted at the icefall. “We can cut blocks from the bottom and hope the rest of it won’t fall and crush us.”

“It won’t,” Charlie said with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“It won’t,” Sam said with a smile and hammered his chisel first into the ice wall.

A bear appeared from the tree line below them as they worked, then brought her cubs out. They sat on their hind quarters and watched. The strange endeavors of humankind are a source of entertainment to the animal kingdom.  

It was a beautiful thing when they were finally done. A coffin of ice as clear as glass, crafted by skilled little hands. The setting sun glinted and turned it a rosy color. The gallery of animals that had assembled in the tree line admired the shining work of these human children with fierce hearts and nimble fingers, then turned and disappeared back into the woods as the sun began to drop below the horizon.

They were tiredly gathering their tools together when they heard a fluttering sound behind them. Enclosed in the translucent box appeared the body of Charlie’s mother. Rowena stood atop it, her eyes glowing an unearthly blue. The children watched as the edges of the box shifted and bonded together. The body seemed suspended in ice-white light inside it.

“Couldn’t she have used her magic to help us build it. It could’ve saved us all that work,” Dean muttered under his breath.

Rowena leapt off the box. “Some things shouldn’t be done with magic. Toil and dedication create their own enchantment.”

She moved past Dean, her eyes still burning with blue fire. She looked closely at Sam, then gripped the back of his hair and held his chin with her other hand, forcing him to look into her eyes. “There’s a deep well of darkness in you, little boy. I can see it buried in there.”

“Let him go,” Dean said in a hard voice, a hammer in one hand and chisel in the other.

Rowena looked at Dean and snorted. “Mountain children! Always threatening their elders. You should be afraid of me, freckle-face. I could snap your darkling brother’s little neck in an instant. Believe me, that would do you and the future a great favor. No good comes from black magic puffed into a womb for a baby to grow fat on.”

Charlie snapped, “Rowena, stop it! These are my friends.”

“Their mother should have thrown that one in the river with a rock tied to his leg the day he was born.”

Sam slanted her a smile. “That’s what the village elders threatened when you came out of your mother with glowing eyes and magic words on your newborn tongue.”  

Charlie drew in a surprised breath. Dean laughed. Rowena raised an eyebrow, then smirked and shrugged. “Probably would have saved everybody a lot of trouble if they had.”

“I’m hungry and I’m tired,” Charlie said grumpily. “Nobody’s killing anybody. Not today. I’m going home.” She gave her mother a long, sad look, then walked away. 

The other three followed her down the mountain, Dean watching Rowena carefully as they walked the path back into the village. At the brow of the final hill before the descent into the village, Charlie turned for a final look and saw a half dozen white wolves ranged on the cliff above the ice casket as if they were guarding it. The moon was just rising, full and lemon yellow above the trees.

*******

“I’m going with her,” Dean said stubbornly, leaning his elbows on the kitchen table and staring hard at the old map spread in front of him. “She’s not going alone.”

“I’m going too.”

“No, you’re not, Sam.”

“Neither of you are coming,” Charlie snapped. “She’s my mother.”

“And ours too,” Sam said quietly. “After our mother died, you shared yours with us. We have no sisters. Yours are all dead and you have no brothers. Both our fathers are gone. Fair is fair. We share what we have. That’s how it is.” 

“How sweet and heroic,” Rowena said dryly.  

“Why aren’t you going with her?  Dean asked irritably “You’re her blood.”

“Virginity, the unselfish quest, purity of heart and purpose. Those are the requirements to get you through the gateway, freckle-face. Not exactly things I have in my bag of tricks.”

Charlie looked at her intently. “Why didn’t you go when you were my age? You said the strongest of every generation has tried before they turned thirteen. Why didn’t you try? Mother said you were born with a greater gift than any before you.”

Rowena looked away, her expression tight. “Not enough courage, or selflessness, or love. Even back then. I ran away in search of adventure and an escape from all this. I wasn’t made for milking goats. I wanted more,” she said angrily and tapped her long sharp nails on the ancient parchment of the map. “But you can’t out-run the curse.” She gave Charlie a hard look. “I’ve suffered as much as every other daughter since my great-grandmother stumbled into the dark heart of the forest and tried to outwit the Erlking. We’ve all paid for it since. Naughty girls who wander off the path get punished.”

She tapped her nails on the map again, then got up and went over to the fireplace, counted three stones up on the left and wiggled loose a fire-blackened stone. It fell on the hearth and revealed a secret cavity in the wall. Surprised, Charlie went over and leaned over her shoulder to see what was hidden inside. Rowena gave her an annoyed look. Charlie stepped back a few paces and waited.

Her mouth fell open when Rowena turned around with a white and wickedly sharp thing in her hand. There were strange symbols and signs carved into it. “What is it?” Charlie asked.

“A blade carved out of great-grandmother’s rib bone.”

The boys crowded closer, their eyes wide with admiration.  

“This, little Red, is what you’re going to use to cut out the heart of the Erlking. Then you’re going to free the part of her that he has trapped in the other world so all of us can be set free.”

Charlie felt Sam’s cool little hand slip into hers when fear leapt inside her.

“It’ll be like hunting a stag in the woods,” Dean said reassuringly. “You’ve done it before, Charlie. Your father was the best hunter in the village. He taught you well.”

Rowena sighed. “It will be nothing like that. He’s a god and is all powerful in his own wooded kingdom.” She reached back into the hidden cavity and pulled out a thick leather-bound book.

Sam suddenly stepped back as if the book had repelled him. Rowena laughed. “That’ll be the white magic lifting all the hairs on your body and making your mouth go dry, darkling. Oh, little boy, there’s something very, very wrong with you.”

Charlie tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and Dean put an arm around his thin shoulders. “Everything is a choice,” Dean said fiercely.

Rowena shrugged. “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.” She went back over to the table and set the book down, blew the dust and soot off it, then opened it.

The children crowded around her and shuddered when they saw the drawing of the Erlking.

“He seduces children into the woods and eats all the flesh off their bones, then traps their souls as playthings. In the old days people used to offer him sacrifices. It was better then. A dozen a year, one every full moon. It kept him appeased. Usually the prettiest little girls in the village, which is why they all look like trolls around here because there’s nothing attractive left in the bloodlines.”

She shrugged when the children frowned at her. “Except for the three of you. My advice to you, kitten, is to give this pretty darkling to the Erlking as a distraction. He’s expendable. Then you and handsome freckle-face can kill him, return triumphantly with his head as a trophy for above the fireplace and live happily ever after together. Your children will be beautiful and I’m willing to be their fairy godmother.”

Charlie sighed.

Dean said, “I don’t like your aunt very much, Charlie.”

Rowena laughed, a dry and brittle sound. “You’ll probably lose the boy over there anyway. That much dark energy always tries to return to the source.”

“I won’t get lost,” Sam said in a cool little voice. “I know the way.” He stared intently at Rowena until she eventually looked away.

“There are spells I can give you, but magic will not be enough, and physical strength is nothing against a creature like Eve’s first born. Ultimately, it will take guile and craftiness to end it.”

Rowena’s expression grew serious as she reached out and placed her hand on Charlie’s chest. “And courage of heart, little Red. That’s what it will take. Something I never had enough of.”

A long, low howl suddenly pierced through the night. Five other wolfy voices picked up the refrain and echoed the lupine song through the mountains.

*******

Charlie left at dawn, her blood-red cloak wrapped tight around her and her gathering bag filled with Rowena’s magic. She was trying to avoid the boys but eluding them was impossible.

Dean was waiting for her at the entrance to the forest. “I’m coming with you, Charlie Bradbury. Don’t argue.”

“So am I,” Sam said, appearing from another path.

Dean huffed an impatient sigh. “Go home, Sammy.”

“You would leave me alone with Rowena, Dean? She’d drown me in the river if you turned your back for a minute. And the villagers would cheer her along. You know how they feel about me. What kind of brother would do that?”

Charlie smiled at the pained and conflicted look on Dean’s face. Sam was an arch manipulator when he needed to be. 

“Don’t slow me down,” she said to them firmly and stepped into the green darkness.

And so they left the safety of the world they knew, these three fierce and courageous children, a Little Red Riding Hood and a pair of bickering boys following in her red wake with long knives hidden beneath their sheepskin coats.

They were familiar with the path, deeper and deeper into the forest, until they reached the line of slender stark-white trees that marked the entrance into the other realm. Nothing could be seen beyond the skeleton trees, nothing but a black veil of dense fog.

“Are you sure you can cross, Dean,” Charlie said uncertainly.

Dean frowned. “You think I lack courage?”

“You have courage enough. I don’t doubt that. But only the pure can cross and—”

“And what?” Dean asked, abrupt and red-faced, ignoring Sam’s raised eyebrows.

“And, it’s just—well, it’s known you spend time with the older milk-maids. And the shepherds too, who spend many weeks alone together away from the village. And, it’s just, well—”

Before Charlie could say anymore, Dean strode through the line of trees and disappeared.

Charlie looked at Sam, who still had his eyebrows raised. “I wasn’t sure if he was a virgin,” she said in a whisper.

Sam lowered his eyebrows and nodded. “Seems he is.”

They held hands and stepped through the line of white trees together.

The air on the other side was like putting your face into a basket of mushrooms left in the larder for too long: a smell of rotted fungus and deep black earth. Sam coughed and Charlie cleared her throat. They kept hold of each other’s hands, the bitter smell and grey gloom and frigid air making them apprehensive. It looked mostly the same as the woods on the other side, just greyer and colder, and somehow older, as if they had stepped backward in time.

“It stinks,” Dean said unnecessarily and kicked a rotted log out of his way.  

Sam looked around and asked, “Which way do we go?”

Charlie pointed to the left. “We need to follow the river upstream to the heart of the forest. That’s where we’ll find him.”

They clambered through the undergrowth, following the sound of the river until they came out on the bank. The water was so dark it was almost black. There was another scent coming from it, something strangely familiar. Moss and rot and something sweeter and more pungent.

“It smells like after you’ve butchered a goat or a deer,” Dean said quietly.

Charlie nodded. That was it exactly.

Sam started towards the water and Dean grabbed his arm. “Where are you going, Sam?”

Sam turned around and Charlie sucked in a startled breath when she saw his eyes. They were swirling with black, as if somebody had spilled ink in them. In a dreamy voice, he said, “I’m thirsty. I want to drink.”

Dean shook him. “No, Sam!” When that didn’t dispel the faraway look on his face, Dean hit him flat-handed on the cheek so a red mark bloomed on his skin. “No, Sammy! You can’t touch or eat or drink anything in this place. Everything is poisoned.”

Blinking, Sam rubbed his cheek, his eyes clearing. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small miserable voice.

Dean hugged him hard, then pushed him away and leaned down so their faces were close. “You have to be strong. You can’t listen to anything that calls to you. It’s all magic. You’ll get lost if you let it in.”

Sam blinked away a few tears and nodded, his expression stubborn and determined.

They continued along the bank of the black river, Dean keeping a sharp eye on his little brother. It was eerily silent, no wind or animal presence in the undergrowth or birdsong above, just the sound of the slow-moving river coiling its way through the woods.

They walked for hours until the gloom took on a blacker cast. Night was drawing near. “We need to camp,” Dean said as they entered a clearing.

Charlie nodded. “We should collect wood for a fire.”

Sam eyed the damp, mossy branches on the ground around them. “Nothing will burn.”

“It will,” Charlie replied and took out a box of matches from her leather bag, a magical gift from Rowena. “We need to build the fire in a circle around us. To keep us safe during the night.”

The three of them cocked their heads at the same time, simultaneously aware of a sound coming towards them, as if something was beginning to move through the undergrowth, something nocturnal that had been awakened by the advance of night.

“Hurry.”

They stacked wet and moldy logs in a circle around them. For a heart-stopping moment, the wet wood refused to burn when they lit it with the magical matches. But suddenly it caught and a ring of orange flame leapt up around them. Something hissed loudly outside the protective wall of fire and they briefly clutched each other.

“We’re safe in the circle,” Charlie said, taking a few unsteady breaths before letting go of Dean’s arm and then sitting down on the ground. The boys sat with her. Charlie took out a loaf of bread from her gathering bag and Dean pulled out a chunk of cheese and three apples from his.

They forgot their fear as they ate. There were things rustling in the dark and sometimes a shadowy form with glowing eyes slunk between the trees. But they knew there was no need to be afraid of what was out there when they were safe in a circle of magic fire. They told each other stories and sang songs to while away the time. It was a well-loved and familiar ritual.  

They slept three in a row: Dean, then Charlie, then Sam tucked in her arms.

Charlie awoke with the smell of Dean’s sheepskin in her nose, his breath damp on her neck and his arms too hot around her. She elbowed him awake and they sat up, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. The circle of burning wood was still glowing. Sam was sitting cross-legged close to the edge of the circle, his back to them.

“What are you looking at, Sammy?”

Over his shoulder, he replied, “There was a man standing on the other side of the river. He was staring into the water. A man with wings on his back and roots growing out of his feet into the soil. He looked very sad. I think he’s waiting for you, Dean.”

Dean frowned, then stood up and looked across the river. “I can’t see anybody.”

Sam stood up. “He’s gone now. Should we have breakfast?”

Dean and Charlie were both used to such things from Sam. That’s how it was with a person who had second sight. It didn’t frighten them or linger too long in their minds. It would become clear when and if it needed to. Most of the time Sam’s visions didn’t seem to have anything to do with the world they lived in.

They ate what was left of the bread and cheese, then continued up the river.

Perhaps it was because they’d become complacent after the safety of the night before or because they were so happy in each other’s company that they failed to notice the fog building up around them.

Charlie was retelling an amusing story about the time the three of them had pushed a horrible boy down a well in retribution for all the times he’d pulled Charlie’s hair and cruelly taunted Sam, when she noticed how silent it had become, no answering chuckles from the boys in response to her tale.

She turned around and saw nothing behind her but thick white fog.

“Dean? Sam?” she called softly, then louder and louder. But there was no reply. Looking around in all directions, she listened carefully for any sound. There was nothing. Nothing but white in her eyes.

With her hands out-stretched, she felt her way carefully forward. A root trapped her foot and she fell. Panicked, she got up and walked wildly ahead, fear making her forget common sense. She fell again, harder, and skinned her knee on a sharp rock poking up through the ground.

Common sense eventually prevailed and she crept to the base of a tree. She wrapped the red cloak tightly around her and prepared to wait it out, as her father had taught her – sometimes calling out in the desperate hope that the boys might still be near.

 

Dean was chuckling to himself at the memory of that cruel boy finally getting what he deserved. Two hours he’d shouted himself hoarse in the well before his friends found him. A richly deserved punishment for every time he’d made Sam and Charlie cry.

 _Dean!_ somebody suddenly whispered urgently in his ear, a strange voice that belonged to neither Sam nor Charlie. He quickly turned around and gripped the hilt of his knife that was tucked into his belt. Goosebumps raised the hair on his arms and the back of his neck. There was nothing behind him, only tall dark trees, the black river and some low-lying mist moving along the ground.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Sam and Charlie, his eyes scanning the trees for movement.

Nobody answered him. 

“Sam, did you hear—” He turned back and the wall of white fog rose up before him like a sudden white blindness.

“Sam!” Dean grabbed handfuls of empty air in an attempt to find his brother next to him. He’d been there just moments before. “Sam!” he shouted again, turning in circles, unable to see anything in the dense white fog. “Where are you? Answer me! Charlie! Can you hear me?”

His voice didn’t echo, didn’t seem to travel. It was muffled by the unnatural mist surrounding him.  He continued shouting until his voice went hoarse. Eventually, he sat down on the forest floor and gave in to hot and bitter tears.

When his tears were spent, he looked up and took a few calming breaths. A little to his left, he noticed a shift in the mist as if it were clearing slightly. He got up and made his way carefully in that direction, knowing from the sound of the water that he was getting closer to the river. A breeze blew up and he could make out a long flat rock next to the water. Sitting on it was the most beautiful girl Dean had ever seen. She turned to look at him.

Her eyes were the color of the sky at night. Dark hair flowed over her shoulders and partly covered her naked breasts. Dean could see the darker color of her nipples through her long hair and felt himself stirring, a sudden need building in his groin. It wasn’t diminished by the realization that from the waist down the girl had the tail of a fish. The scales were a glossy and silvery grey. They shimmered slightly in the gloom.

“Have you come to rescue me?”

The voice was soft and musical, like the sound of a gentle brook.

“Who are you?” Dean asked, drawing closer.

She looked up at him sadly and Dean felt as if he could fall into the dark pools of her eyes and lose himself forever.

“I don’t remember anymore. I’ve been trapped here for so long that I’ve lost my name.”

Dean crouched down next to her. “The Erlking keeps you here?”

She sighed and nodded, then placed a cool white hand on Dean’s arm. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Will you help me?” She lifted her hand and stroked Dean’s cheek. He felt his breath get stuck in his throat at the feeling of her cool fingers against his skin.

A sound in the trees behind him caught his attention. He would have turned but she held his face firmly with both hands. “Help me.”

“I want to, but I think I need to find somebody first,” Dean said uncertainly, his thoughts clouding as if the fog had entered his mind. He tried to hold on to something that was still there, somewhere in the back of his thoughts. “I think there’s somebody else here with me and I need to find them.”

The girl smiled and gently stroked her fingers across Dean’s lips. “There’s nobody else, Dean. It’s just you and me here.” She brushed her hair aside and Dean felt a hot jolt of arousal at the sight of her bare breast.

He desperately wanted to touch her but at the same time he felt an overriding need to look away. Turning his head, he saw his reflection in the river. He had two dark stripes across each cheek. He couldn't remember how they'd got there. He lifted his hand to touch them and the metallic scent of animal blood filled his nostrils. His fingers came away from his face red with blood.

Dean leaned forward, ignoring the girl’s quietly murmured opposition, and looked closer at his reflection. His eyes were cloudy and grey, like those of a fish left too long in the sun. And there, in the center of his forehead was another eye, clear and green, staring back at him.

The smell of rotting fish assaulted his senses. With his one clear eye, he looked at the reflection of the girl next to him and saw that her skin was loose and discolored. The beautiful tail was bloated, the scales dull and crusted. The smell of rot was coming from her. Wet and slimy hair hung around her haggard and mottled face. She smiled at him and he saw the rows of small sharp fish teeth in her mouth. 

“Do you think I’m pretty, Dean? Do you want me?”

Dean fell back and scuttled away from her, filled with horror. She flopped towards him, using her tail as leverage to move herself across the rock. Dean jumped up and ran back up onto the riverbank away from her outstretched hands.

“Come here, boy. I’m so hungry. I want you. Come to me.”

Dean ran as fast as he could back into the woods, his breath tearing in his chest.

 

Sam didn’t like to think about the boy in the well. Not because he felt bad for him. He got what he deserved. He was a cruel and violent boy and would grow up to be a cruel and violent man. It wasn’t guilt that made Sam want to forget about that day; it was the knowledge he’d gained about his own self as a result of the experience.

The truth was that he wanted the well to fill with water so the boy would drown. And he’d known that if he concentrated hard enough, it would’ve happened. It was like that. All he needed to do was to think really hard about something and it happened. It was painful. Sometimes his nose would bleed. Other times he’d fall over and wake up a long time later. But as he grew older, it was getting easier and easier.

The reason he hadn’t drowned the boy was not because he knew it was bad. He didn’t really care about that. He didn’t do it because he knew Dean would be angry with him.

No, it would have been far worse than that. Dean would’ve been horrified. He would’ve looked at Sam the way other people looked at him. And that could never, ever happen. Dean was everything: happiness, safety, light, warmth, comfort, and love. There was nothing without him but hurt and loneliness.   

Distracted by his thoughts, he almost bumped into the man with wings. “Oh, there you are again,” he said.

“Who are you?” the winged man asked.

“I’m Sam Winchester.”

The man smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. “Of course you are,” he said dryly. Then he looked very closely at Sam for a long time and finally made a sighing sound as if he’d come to some sort of realization. “What are you doing here, Sam Winchester?”

“We’re going to kill the Erlking and free the souls of the children he’s trapped here, including a small part of Charlie’s great-great-grandmother’s soul that she left here many years ago. The Erlking uses it for black magic to punish all the girls in Charlie’s family. Her mother’s asleep and won’t wake up until we break the curse.”

“I see,” the man said and gave another little ghost of a smile. One with some actual feeling in it. “I assume by your use of the word ‘we’ that you mean your brother Dean is with you. Where is he?”

Sam turned around and noticed the curling mist between the trees behind him. He closed his eyes and thought hard about Dean. His nose was bleeding when he opened his eyes again. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his shirt. “He’s on his way. He’ll be here soon.”

“Then I’ll leave you.” The man lifted the roots of his feet out of the soil.

“I thought you were waiting for Dean.”

“No,” the man said quietly. “Your brother is not the one I’m waiting for.”

“Before you leave, can I ask you a question?”

“If you must,” the man replied with resigned impatience.

“Why are you so sad?”

The winged man sighed. It was one of the saddest sounds Sam had ever heard.

“Because I’ve done many terrible things.”

Sam looked at him closely. “You have a good heart. I can tell that about you. I don't think you would've done terrible things with bad intentions.”

The man crouched down in front of him. “Know this, little Sam Winchester. Intentions are inconsequential. Only actions matter. We will be held accountable for what we have done. That is all. Our misguided intentions will not mitigate the pain and destruction we cause. You have much dark power in you, small boy. Don’t trust it.”

Sam stared at him solemnly, then nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

Sam turned when he heard Dean’s footsteps behind him. Dean ran towards him, grabbed him and held him tight. Sam took in deep breaths of his brother’s wonderful, familiar smell, his head hidden in Dean's neck.

There were tears in Dean’s eyes when he pulled back. He rubbed Sam’s hair. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“That will never happen, Dean.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Nobody,” Sam said quietly. “I was just thinking out loud.”

“We need to find Charlie. We can’t let her face that monster alone.”

Sam nodded. “She’ll have carried on following the river to the heart of the forest after she couldn’t find us.”

“Then let’s go. Stay close to me, Sam. I’m not losing you again.”

 

Charlie searched for them for hours before giving up. The only solution was to do what she had come here to do and hope the boys would be returned to her after she cut out the Erlking’s heart and destroyed his dark power.

It was lonely and frightening without their company, but Charlie’s courage did not falter. It was not in her nature. Sorrow had been her playmate from the moment she was born. Enduring the loss of her beloved father and her four sweet sisters had forged her heart with iron-clad resilience. She would not give up.

It was the sound of bird song that first alerted her that he was near. It became louder and louder as she followed the winding path along the bank of the black river. The closer she got, the taller and greener the trees became. A strange yellow light suffused the air and vivid butterflies fluttered overhead.

Finally, she arrived in a broad clearing. She had to cover her ears at first because the sound of so many birds singing all at once hurt her ears. The branches were filled with them. Birds of every kind and size and color. Squirrels and badgers and deer wandered the clearing and looked at her curiously.

He was at the center on a throne of woven branches. Two enormous black wolves sat before him, their chops slick with silvery saliva, his hands resting on their heads. They growled low in their throats when Charlie drew near.

The Erlking patted their heads reassuringly and summoned her closer. He sat like a man in his wooden throne but there was nothing human about him. His antlers were enormous and wickedly sharp, his eyes flat and black, his heavily muscled body was thick with dark fur. His ears flicked and his nostrils twitched when she sank to her knees at his feet, her head bowed, a penitent before the god of the woods.

He patted her bent head and she got up onto his lap, knowing what he wanted. “Father,” she said and nuzzled into his broad shoulder. He smelt musky and alive, wild and unfamiliar. She could feel his beating heart, a steady rhythm that made her eyelids grow heavy.

She felt his hands stroking through her hair. Not hooves but fingers like hard leather hooves. Pleasure leapt through her and she knew he was amused by it. Harder and harder he stroked, until it hurt, and that was a kind of pleasure too. Her hair coiled and writhed beneath his fingers. And then a flutter of small scarlet birds took flight from the red cloud of her hair. 

Charlie felt herself weaken as if some essential part of her had fled her body and she steeled herself. This was the moment.  

She sensed rather than saw Sam and Dean creep up behind the throne. She knew the other animals were distracted and bewitched by the spectacle of her on the Erlking’s broad and naked lap. She scratched her fingers through the fur on his chest and called him father again. He made a low, grunting sound of pleasure. She felt in her bag for the knife of bone and waited for the moment when Sam and Dean would leap on the wolves and cut their throats.

It was a terrible sound. The rending of flesh and awful choking howls of pain. She leaped up and plunged the knife into the Erlking’s chest, her aim sure and true, between the hard ribs and straight into the beating center of his being. He screamed and the unholy sound echoed through the woods. Trees collapsed and fell to the ground in loud whumps. The birds screeched and flew in feathered chaos through the clearing.

Charlie watched the Erlking’s black eyes dull and close, then she pulled the blade from his chest and wiped it clean on his fur.

Sam’s and Dean’s sheepskins were covered in blood, the wolves dead at their feet. She smiled at them briefly and then looked around the clearing until she saw a small cage of birch branches imprisoning a tiny red bird. She went to it and opened the latch, put her hand inside. “Hello, great-great-grandmother. I’ve come to set you free.”

The body of the tiny, flittering bird was warm in her hand, but as soon as she took it out of the cage, it changed form and Charlie was left with a handful of red hair. It turned grey, then crumbled into dust and blew away.

The little flock of bright red birds on the branch above Charlie’s head flew down and nestled back into the folds of her hair. They tickled her as they burrowed deeper and deeper. It made her laugh. “Now we can all be free,” she said, scratching her itchy scalp as her heart leapt with joy at the thought of her mother’s arms around her.

“We need to go, Charlie,” Dean said urgently behind her. “She’s coming.”

The wind was picking up and making a shrieking sound through the trees. The sky above the clearing had turned dark. Lightning cut and crackled in sharp, jagged lines through its velvety darkness.

Charlie nodded and searched through her bag. She found what she was looking for and pulled it out: a shiny, hinged cage of steel, the length and shape of the muzzle of a very large wolf.

Dean swore and Sam laughed. Charlie smiled, then put her fingers between her lips and whistled.

It came on soft paws through the trees, its fur a dazzling white like the first snowfall on the mountains. Its head was hanging low and its teeth were yellow and very sharp. It was the size of a cart horse. Dean pushed Sam behind him. He swore again.

Charlie swallowed hard. “It’s alright. It’s here for us,” she said with a reassurance she didn’t entirely feel. How much faith could she put in Rowena’s magic now that the Erlking was dead.

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Charlie,” Dean said dryly.

“I’ll distract it,” Sam said, already running as he said it, anything else he said lost as he turned away from them.  

Dean and Charlie sprinted after him at the same moment that the wolf started bounding across the clearing. They met in the middle. Dean grabbed a handful of fur and pulled himself onto the back of the wolf as Charlie threw him the muzzle. He clamped it on mid-snap as it tried to bite Sam in half.

Charlie jumped onto the back of the beast and landed behind Dean, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist. Sam fell, then rolled, and Dean reached down and hauled him up to sit between his legs.

The wolf shook its head, growled at the restraining force of the muzzle, then took off across the clearing and plunged into the forest, running so fast that tears streamed from the children’s eyes. Sam gripped the shaggy fur on the wolf’s neck and turned to grin at Dean and Charlie. The wind was whistling past and plucked the angry words from their mouths so he couldn’t hear them rebuking him for his recklessness. He dug his knees into the beast and urged it on.

Branches and whole trees flew at them as the hurricane of Eve’s mother-grief built behind them.  

The wolf galloped on, fearless and focused on its final destination.

The white skeleton trees appeared before them, a golden haze behind it, and the wolf made a yipping noise of joy that was muffled by the muzzle. The children leaned forward on its back as it ran harder and they prepared themselves for the final dash into the light.

They felt it when the earth started to fall away beneath the wolf’s scrabbling paws, a great yawning mouth opening up beneath them. They cried in terror and the wolf arched its back, throwing them forward as it started to fall into the deep pit beneath it.

They flew through the air, burst through the line of trees and fell hard on the other side, the sound of the wolf’s long sad howl echoing in their ears.

Sam tried to run back but Dean gripped him by the scruff of his neck and sat on him when he struggled to get free. “No, Sam! The wolf’s dead. It died saving us.”

Sam looked murderous and his eyes turned black. The ground around them shuddered. Frightened, Charlie stepped back, but Dean just cuffed Sam hard and shouted, “Stop that, Sam! It’s over. We’re home now.”

Charlie watched Sam as he started to cry. She felt sad about the death of the noble wolf too, but it seemed strange to weep so hard over the death of a creature that had tried to bite him in half. Sam had always had a deep affinity with wild things. Dean patted Sam consolingly on the head and Charlie could see the conflicted feelings in his expression: love and sympathy and loyalty, and also fear. Fear of Sam or for him, she wasn’t completely sure. She’d known that Sam’s gifts had been growing stronger as he grew older. It wasn’t hard to see that, but what she’d just witnessed made her nervous, made her start to understand why people reacted in the way that they did to Sam.

Charlie looked at Dean and saw that he was reading her expressions as she had read his. She was suddenly filled with love for this brave and loyal boy, a boy that would follow her into the dark center of the forest to help her rescue her mother, a boy who was her friend and her brother. She grinned at him and saw the relief in his expression. “Come on,” she said, “Mother will be waiting for us. Let’s go home.”

 

It was a night filled with joy. They ate dinner together at the table: Charlie, her mother, Rowena, Sam and Dean. Like some sort of strange, mismatched family. Charlie’s mother fussed over the three children, alternating between scolding them for risking their lives and praising them for their courage. She kissed them constantly. Rowena wore a small, amused smile and made sarcastic comments that everybody ignored.

And outside the wolves sang a lament to the full moon in honour of the noble courage of their own brother.     

 

 

       

 


End file.
